Rockets take away the 3-point shot as well as they shoot them

Houston Rockets guard James Harden (13) defensing Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant (35) during the first quarter of the NBA game at Toyota Center on Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018, in Houston.

Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

The Warriors had made just four 3-pointers, with half coming after the rout was certain and the benches were cleared.

The struggles were no doubt an anomaly, even in the Warriors’ sudden slump, and in no small part from playing without the range shooting and defense stretching of Stephen Curry. But Kevin Durant, an offensive savant that had seen every sort of defense built to slow the Warriors, marveled at what the Rockets had done to the NBA’s best offense.

“Houston did a good job of switching everything,” he said. “It threw us off our rhythm a little bit. This team is unique. Every single action they make your best players try to play one-on-one or in a crowd.”

The Warriors put up 11 fewer 3-pointers than they take per game, making seven fewer than they average. But their nearly 3-free night was not unusual for Rockets opponents.

For all the talk of the Rockets’ 3-point and iso-heavy offense, and the records that it has set, the defense has been built around the same philosophies. Just as the Rockets are on pace to set NBA records for 3-point attempts for a third consecutive season, they allow the second-fewest 3s and 3-point attempts, the primary goal of their switching style and what they do after they switch.

“It’s a bit of both,” coach Mike D’Antoni said. “Switching makes it easier. And one of our cardinal rules is that nobody should take a 3. Now, they might drive around you, but then we have other stuff that we want to kick in. So, we do try to take away the transition or the easy 3s.

“They will drive to the basket and kick out and create a 3. But we put a big effort on we don’t want to foul, we don’t want to give them layups and we don’t want to give them 3s. That’s what we want offensively. If that’s what we want offensively, why wouldn’t we want to take that away defensively?”

It turns out that the driving principle of the Rockets’ offense, that 3s are worth more than 2s, is true on the other end of the floor, too.

That is the primary reason the Rockets switch on screens so often. That allows them to keep the other three defenders with their assignments, rather than to leave a shooter open while rotating to the middle to cut off a rolling big man heading to the rim.

Even if an opposing big man gets a mismatch inside, besides getting teams to stray from their priorities in the 3-heavy era of NBA offense, his post-ups will work only for shots worth fewer points than the 3-pointers the Rockets are launching.

“It’s no secret the reason we’ve been successful defensively the past couple of seasons is we just try to (allow) the exact opposite of what our offense is doing,” Rockets assistant coach Roy Rogers said. “Our offense works extremely hard to get up as many quality 3-point shots as possible. So our defense, we try to focus on taking away as many quality 3-point shots as possible.

“The switching is a very large part of it, but the focus is when we switch, why are we switching? We are switching to take away the 3s. We like for our guys to get up and guard two steps above the 3-point line and force their offensive player inside the 3-point line.”

Running opponents off the 3-point line will give up drives, putting a premium on help defense and communication. Early in the season, when the Rockets’ defense struggled, the help wasn’t there to the point the Rockets’ philosophy gave up layups.

Though the Rockets were taking away 3s even then, ranking second in 3s allowed, they were so poor at rotating when opponents drove, the Rockets were 5th defensively through six games. They have had the eighth-ranked defense since, with the defensive rotations reliable and aggressive.

“We look at it this way: the ball must always see five defenders,” Rogers said. “We don’t like to leave any of our players on an island. We want our guys to feel they have help. We don’t like teams to play one-on-one. We want players to feel when they go one-on-one, they go one-on-five.

“It has improved. Early in the season we were struggling with our communication. The effort was there. It was the communication that was lacking and the way we play defense, you have to communicate. I would say from our first games to now, our communication has done a 180.

“They realize how good they can be defensively when they’re all locked in. It’s exciting right now.”

D’Antoni has not backed off his preseason goal to have a defense better than last season’s when the Rockets were seventh in the NBA and third in the second half of the season. It has a way to go to reach that level, but it starts with taking away the shots the Rockets like most.

“The switching makes a difference, but also it’s after switching, trying to run people off the line,” forward P.J. Tucker said. “No matter how good a shooter they are or not; we still try to not give up 3s. It’s not only taking guys off the line, but also everybody being ready to help.

“It’s gotten better, but it’s one of those things as a player you take with a grain of salt. You can be good at something, really good at something, for 10 games, but you have to do it for a whole season and always stay on top of it. Even when it’s great, it’s never enough. You want to get better at it.”

Jonathan Feigen has been the Rockets beat writer since 1998 and a basketball nut since before Willis Reed limped out for Game 7. He became a sports writer because the reporter that was supposed to cover the University of Delaware basketball team decided to instead play one more season of college lacrosse and has never looked back.

Feigen, who has won APSE, APME and United States Basketball Writers Association awards from El Campo to Houston, came to Texas in 1981 to cover the Rice Birds, was Sports Editor in Garland before moving to Dallas to cover everything from the final hurrah of the Southwest Conference to SMU after the death penalty.

After joining the Houston Chronicle in 1990, Feigen has covered the demise of the SWC, the rise of the Big 12 and the Rockets at their championship best.